POPE LEO XIV has said that the long-delayed peace talks between Russia and Ukraine should “finally happen” and bring about a “just and lasting peace”. He has offered the Vatican as a possible venue for negotiations.
The Pope was addressing the crowds at his inauguration in Rome on Sunday (News, 19 May), after the peace negotiations in Istanbul on Friday had failed to produce a breakthrough. Despite agreeing a large-scale prisoner swap, President Putin chose not to attend what had been meant to be the first high-level meeting with President Zelensky.
President Zelensky travelled to Istanbul under US pressure for a face-to-face meeting with President Putin and for a 30-day ceasefire. In the event, neither was accomplished. Russia was represented by a mid-level delegation led by a Putin aide, Vladimir Medinsky, which brought preconditions for a ceasefire agreement. The demands included the military withdrawal of Ukraine from all regions claimed by Russia, Reuters reported.
Speaking for the Pope, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, described the outcome of the meeting in Istanbul as “tragic. . . We hoped that a process would begin, perhaps slowly, but with a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Instead, we are back to square one.” He said that Pope Leo was ready, “if necessary, to provide the Vatican, the Holy See, for a direct meeting between the two sides”.
The offer was seized upon immediately by President Zelensky, as well as the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who was also in Rome for the papal inauguration. Answering a journalist’s question about the Vatican as a “peace broker”, Mr Rubio commented that he “wouldn’t call it a broker”, but expressed optimism that the Vatican is “a place that both sides would be comfortable going”.
Pope Leo hosted his first official audience for heads of state by welcoming President Zelensky, who presented the new Pope with an icon of the Virgin Mary with Child painted on a piece of an ammunition case from the Kharkiv region.
UNDER Pope Francis, the Vatican’s involvement in Ukraine was focused primarily on humanitarian efforts, particularly to secure the return of abducted Ukrainian children from Russia and to facilitate prisoner-of-war exchanges.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Primate, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, met Pope Leo last Thursday and handed over the names of Ukrainians held captive in Russia and missing in combat.
“Every time I visit our parishes in different regions of Ukraine, I meet with families of prisoners of war and those missing in action, and they give me the names of their relatives with a request to personally hand them over to the Pope,” he said at the meeting.
While the Vatican’s offer of hosting talks marks a significant gesture on the international stage, religious efforts to resist Russian influence are also intensifying within Ukraine.
The State Agency for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Religion (DESS) in Ukraine will begin examining religious organisations in Ukraine to identify any that have been spreading Russian propaganda. The decision was approved by the Ukrainian cabinet of ministers at the beginning of the month.
The procedure deals specifically with the promotion of the “Russian World”, an ideology promoted by the Kremlin and used to justify Russian policy on Ukraine. A decision taken by the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers states that this policy “contradicts the interests of national and public security, and the territorial integrity of Ukraine”.
The government listed 12 indicators of “Russian World” propaganda in religious life, including the denial of the existence of the Ukrainian nation and statehood, presentation of the Russian military operation as “holy war”, and “justification of the need to restore the Eurasian imperial space, in which there is no place for an independent Ukraine, under the auspices of the Russian Federation”.
These new measures follow the adoption of the Law “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Field of Activities of Religious Organisations”, which prohibits the work of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, alongside religious organisation that are affiliated to it.
Under the legislation adopted last year, which drew international criticism for its consequences for religious rights in Ukraine, the State Agency for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Religion also announced that it would start implementing Article 3 of the law this week — assessing the affiliation of religious organisations in Ukraine to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Kyiv Metropolis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, under Metropolitan Onuphry, will be first to be examined.
The start of the implementation of the law comes after religious organisations were given nine months to sever any connections with Moscow.